The Mirror
by a rose and its thorns
Summary: You may be reading this for several reasons. Keep in mind; the following information can change your life. Written for school.


**_[enter=intruder;warning=time:5s;][override]_ Permissions level: highest. Overriding all warning-type commands. Shut down alarm system. Activate security within room. Simulated Defence Movement on. Intruder Warning ignored. [_/enter][/warning][/override]_**

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**_[start="type:Notice;typing-start:Begin;"][timeskip]_ Hello there. You may be reading this for several reasons.**

**The first reason is that we have been, in some way, subdued. If that is so, then it is our rivals who have released this information to the public, not us.**

**The second reason is that we have made a few foolish decisions and decided that it is time you knew the truth.**

**The third reason is that we have no choice. This means something drastic has happened in the world, meaning that withholding this information is no longer an option.**

**This has all been typed, locked, recorded and archived long before. We do not know the reason why you are reading something that should not be read.**

**Keep in mind: the following information can change your life. [_/start][/timeskip]_**

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**_[enter][command:Release][memory]_ Begin.**

**Start-time: 10s.**

**Loading potential information. You may want to sit down for this.**

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**Dear reader,**

**Remember those classic novels, such as Jane Eyre, or Little Women, or Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde? Those books that everyone wants to have read, but nobody wants to read. Everyone loves a classic.**

**Some time ago, we discovered something shocking.**

**Classics are real.**

**They are actually _real_. Their plots have been happening in the world, the planet Earth that we live in. The reason why we don't notice these events happening is because of a phenomenon called the Fourth Wall. It separates "fiction" or fictional worlds from "reality", that is to say, _us._**

**Another shocking thing has happened.**

**The timeline of Earth's history has been completely rewritten. It does not target us. Instead, it targets the classic novels. Each and every classic novel has been moved into a different time period.**

**This may not target us...but it does affect us. If the classic novel timeline is continuously rewritten this way, the Fourth Wall will eventually be _destroyed._ This means the end of the world as we know it is ever nearing.**

**The first classic novel that has been moved is _Through the Looking-Glass_ by Lewis Carroll. It has been moved into the future.**

**Originally it was set in Victorian England, on November 4th, a day before Guy Fawkes Day. Alice then "falls through" the looking-glass [or mirror, as we call it] into the Looking-Glass land, where everything is backwards.**

**In the futuristic version of Through the Looking-Glass, Alice is a seventeen-year-old instead of a seven-year-old. This new world is disorganized, yet there are many laws that may seem ridiculous today. Laws, called 'Codes', are taken extremely seriously, and there are brutal consequences for not following them.**

**Take a look at this new version of Through the Looking-Glass.**

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Alice rubbed Snowdrop's belly absently. Just approximately two-point-seven hours ago, a new Code had come through, decreeing that everyone who owned pets must turn them over or be Arrested. She could not figure out why one was not allowed to have pets anymore. They were perfectly fine, making good companions and keeping you cheerful and occupied and more often than not, exasperated.

The Enforcers had not reached her street yet. She peeked out of the window once, scanning first the left side of the street and then the right side of the street. She could enjoy her last few moments with Dinah, and her kits, Snowkit and Dropp, before they came to take them away…possibly separate them, cart them off to who-knows-where.

"Kill them, perhaps?" she wondered aloud. Alice thought back to her Contemporary History learn-Book. "_The disposed and useless are…are…eliminated from the city's premises…_and I forgot the rest. Dreadful, that. If I knew, I'd follow them and try and steal you back…" she was lost in her daydreams for a moment. "No, I wouldn't. I'd be killed, or…_the punishment for breaking a Code, no matter how minor, is always punishable by death, unless the convicted has an excuse such as being under the age of five, or a mental disability of some sort. If this is the case, their parents or guardians will be put to death for not disciplining their…"_

Midsentence, Alice realized what she was reciting and stopped with a shudder. "Ugh! How morbid. I won't think about that now." She began absentmindedly running her fingers over the intricate grooves of a wood-carved White Pawn and chatting to her cats, surprisingly calm despite the fact that she would probably never see them again, when there was a loud knocking at her door.

Alice groaned. "Ugh, there they are now." She got slowly to her feet, stalling for a few seconds. The knocking on the door turned into loud, abrasive pounding. She narrowed her eyes at its general direction; feeling suddenly very frustrated all of a sudden. "I'm _coming_!" she yelled, tossing the Pawn over her shoulder and starting towards it.

At that moment there was a resounding _crash._ She turned around, her mouth forming a perfect O as the large mirror behind her shattered into large pieces that lay on the floor. The harsh pounding momentarily faded from her ears as she stood there, too frozen with shock.

_Boom._ She was jolted back to reality; the pounding on her door had increased to such an almighty drumming when it crashed open with such force that it became unhinged. But instead of the armoured Enforcers she had expected, there was…

…No one?

Alice looked down and nearly screamed in surprise. "Why it's the White King and White Queen," she said to herself. "And they look extremely similar to my own pieces. No, wait; they _are_ my own pieces. Look, here's a missing piece of the Queen's crown—I remember breaking that off myself!"

She stared in astonishment as they dashed off toward the broken mirror and toward the White Pawn, lying broken upon a shard of glass. To her surprise, the Queen sprinted towards it, letting out a wail of despair. "Lilly!" she screeched. "Not _another_ broken pawn; this is the third in a _month_! Who will take her place now?"

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**Here, we lose track of the story for a bit. The next time we come back to it, there is a White Army about to attack Alice.**

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"_You did this!"_ the White Queen screamed very loudly. Alice jumped and clapped her hands to her hears.

"Nonsense!" she retorted, eyes flicking nervously to the White Army flooding the room. "Besides, that's not even a proper Army. A real chess Army has fourteen pieces excluding the King and Queen. You've got more Rooks than you should."

"And Nights, and Bishops, and Pawns, too," the Queen replied. "_You _should know that a proper chess Army always has more pieces than necessary, and less pieces than needed."

"I haven't got time to talk nonsense," Alice said, trying to figure out what the Queen had said.

"And I haven't got time to waste on such stupidity," sniffed the Queen. At that moment the entire Army surged forward, and though they were less than half of Alice's height, it was admittedly a scary sight. She turned around, trying to find some means of escape. Her eyes fell upon a door. Only later would it occur to her that it had never been there before.

She ran to it, flinging it wide open and diving through it, then slamming it and locking it behind her. Breathing hard with her back pressed against the door, she took in her surroundings carefully.

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**Alice arrives in a garden full of metal flowers. Having never seen a flower before, dead or alive, but having learned about them in school, she wonders at the importance of having metal flowers.**

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"After all," she said to herself, "flowers are much better _alive._ They don't do much as metal flowers, besides the fact that they don't need to be cared for." As she said this she eyed them thoughtfully.

"Well, I don't see the purpose of having humans, as all they do is say stupid things," a voice snapped. Alice looked down. It was a flower that had spoken.

"They're not stupid," she said gently, trying to keep her temper, "if you'll bother correcting them." And she thought, _I never! A talking metal flower._

"And what is this one?" another voice said loudly, talking over her. "Are you _sure_ it's a human, Tiger? I thought they were cleverer."

"So they are," Tiger replied gravely. "Even so, she looks like she's got some common-sense, if not intelligence."

Alice wasn't sure how to respond to that, so she asked a question of her own. "Why is your name Tiger, when you're a flower?" she inquired. "One might think they were talking to an actual tiger."

"Why, I'm a Tiger-lily, of course!" the flower said, and a thousand shrill voices chimed in: "Didn't you know that?"

"Then," Alice said sensibly, "you should be called Tiger-lily, instead of Tiger. That's what names are for, anyhow."

"Is it?" another flower chimed in. "So I suppose if I were to be called Rose, because that's what I am, after all, then you're to be called Girl?"

"Of course not. I'm called Alice or Liss. There are tons of girls out there; we have to have different names or else no one will be able to tell us apart."

"Exactly," said a Violet triumphantly. "There are tons of Violets out here too, and if we were all called violets no one would be able to tell us apart, either." And the thousand voices said again, "Didn't you know that?"

"But you don't even talk to each other," Liss argued. "You were dead silent when I entered—when I entered—where is _here_, exactly?"

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**_Here_ is an odd rendering of the Looking-Glass world. The land is not laid out like a chessboard, and instead of Squares, there are Doors. The Door that took Alice to the garden of metal flowers was the first.**

**In comparison to the original version of the book, the Garden of Live Flowers was not a Square but here, the Garden of Metal Flowers is a Door. Alice is not named a pawn, and does not start at the Second Door (assuming Doors are equal to Squares).**

**The Doors also do not follow the order of the Squares. When Liss enters the second Door, she literally bumps into Haigha. He explains to her that he is one of the White King's messengers, and he's the Go. The other messenger, Hatta, is the Come. Haigha and Liss then have an interesting conversation:**

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"How curious!" Haigha remarked, standing up and brushing himself off. "Nobody's ever come through That Way."

"What do you mean?" Liss asked. "Which way do they go, then?"

"Why, This Way, of course," Haigha said loftily. "You ought to know that. And as I was saying, Nobody is ever coming through That Way. He'll be awfully mad now that you've done it."

"So everybody goes through This Way?"

"Of course, and so do Anybody and Somebody. That Way is reserved for Nobody only—until _you_ came through, of course. I say, can you see Anybody there, in the distance?"

"No," Liss said truthfully, squinting as hard as she could. "No, I see nobody."

"_Liar!_" screeched Haigha so loudly and suddenly that she clapped a hand to her ear. "Why, to confuse Anybody with Nobody! Abominable, simply abominable. Have you learned nothing, child, have you had no education at all?"

She was thoroughly confused by now, but decided to answer as best as she could. "I've learned History, and Geography though there isn't much of that to learn about, and Science—"

"All of them, I hope?" Haigha said anxiously.

"N-nearly," she stammered, and continued: "Mathematics and Literature."

Haigha squinted at her, then took a magnifying glass out and proceeded to measure her. _How odd,_ thought Alice, _measuring someone with a magnifying glass. That's never been done before._

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**Liss never meets Hatta, or the White King himself, contrary to what happens in the original version. Instead, she enters the Third Door. Here, she finds herself walking down a dimly lit hallway. Its walls are bare and made of grey metal. After a while, Liss realizes that she's not getting anywhere—the hallway seems to go on forever, and moreover, the walls seem to be pressing in on her.**

**Just when she thinks she's going to be pressed flat, Liss finds herself on a train, which clanks on for a bit before Liss realizes that it seems to be going backwards. The carriage is too dark for her to see anything, but she hears a lot of voices whispering together, and after a while, they rise to a steady hum of chatter, which becomes a million people screaming at once.**

**Liss sticks her head out the window for some quiet; the window grows bigger and bigger until she realizes she's no longer sticking her head out of it anymore; she's sticking her whole self through it. It becomes a door, which she steps through.**

**The Fourth Door is where she meets Dee and Dum. They introduce her to their pet crow, Bandersnatch. She asks them if they know where she is, because she is...**

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"...hopelessly lost in this strange world," Liss said.

The brothers looked at each other and grinned. "There's nothing strange," said Dee, "if you _think_ it's normal. Contrariwise, if you _think_ it's strange, then there's nothing normal."

"But it's _not_ normal," said Liss. "Compared with home, it's not. I can't possibly call something normal if it's not, and I can't call something strange if it's normal."

Dee and Dum looked at each other and grinned again.

"Anyhow," said Dum, "there isn't much time left—"

"Before what?" Liss asked curiously.

"Before _Why,_ not What," Dee corrected. Liss looked more confused than ever. "And I say—where's that Crow got to?"

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**At that moment, the sky turns black. The Crow hasactually grown large, and larger, and even larger still. It starts to shake a rattle in its beak. Dum sees this and starts to attack the Crow, screaming that he is going to ruin his rattle. Frightened, Liss runs through a door in a tree behind her.**

**In the Fifth Door, she finds herself sitting on a boat. The queer thing is that there is just a boat, no water or even land. She starts to climb out of the boat, but the moment her other foot is over the side she finds herself back in the boat. A Gnat appears in the boat with her.**

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"You should really start going," he said lazily.

"I don't know where to go," she replied helplessly.

"Well," the Gnat yawned, "everyone knows how Direction works. If you want to go Somewhere, you have to start rowing first. But if you wanted to go Nowhere, on the other hand, then you have to go there first, and row afterward."

And having passed on those helpful directions, he disappeared.

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**Liss decides to start rowing and see what happens. She finds herself rowing down a nice river with clear blue water, and dream-rushes growing at the sides. After a while, she notices that there are more and more dream-rushes, until there are more rushes than there is water. At that moment, a giant Crab rears out of the water and flips the boat over. As Liss falls, the boat turns into a Door and she falls through it.**

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She found herself in a land, so queer it was hard to describe, and as soon as you found the right word for it you lost it again. "I do declare, I'm Nowhere," she said. The moment she said this, a brick appeared in front of her, and before her eyes it started growing until it was the size of a large wall.

"Do you know," said a voice, "that I've spoken to the King himself? Yes, _the King,_ and he's promised me something himself, he has."

Rather startled, she turned around, and seeing no one, turned back to the large brick. This time there was someone—or something—sitting atop it. "It's an egg, with a face," Liss said in astonishment, talking out loud in her excitement. "Its nose is rather small, and its mouth is stretched so wide—I wonder how far around its face it goes…"

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**Humpty Dumpty makes a rude remark at that, and the two have a rather rude conversation. It seems that Humpty's aim is to confuse Liss, who, having caught up on this, refuses to be confused. Humpty remarks "happy unbirthday" before disappearing along with everything but the large brick.**

**Liss is unsure what to do, so she goes to the wall and tries climbing over it. The Gnat appears again and tells her that it's useless climbing over Walls if they don't want to be climbed over. He suggests climbing down "if you want to get over". Liss, unsure, of what this means, complies anyway. As soon as she starts climbing down, she is through the Seventh Door.**

**She finds herself a shop, where the shelves are all empty and there is no one at the counter. As soon as she nears a shelf, it moves away from her, and she tries to find the exit or entrance, but there are none. After a while, Liss tries to go in the opposite direction of where she wants to go, and as soon as she does this, she is out of the shop. Somehow, she has two chess pieces in her hands: a White Knight and a Red Knight. Surprised, she sets them down, where they immediately grow to her height and start fighting a battle in complete silence.**

**After a few minutes, the Red Knight suddenly rides away. The White Knight approaches Liss, and the two have a bit of a conversation on the difference between Nights and Knights.**

**In the futuristic Looking-Glass world, there are no Knights (there are Nights instead). The difference is that, according to the White Night, "Knights prefer their horses too much—bad for battle. A horse can throw you off. Nights, however, prefer owls, much better than horses."**

**The White Night shows her the Last Door. When she climbs through it, to her surprise she is outside her house. Liss knocks on the door, but no one answers. Frustrated, she knocks louder, then pounds on it. At that moment, it swings open with such force that it breaks. On the other side of the threshold is Alice, holding Snowkit in one arm and Dropp in the other. The two step over the threshold at the same time and become each other. At that moment, fireworks go off in the sky, and that entire world disappears.**

**We interpret this to mean that the Fourth Wall has been partly fixed, and that _Through the Looking-Glass _is back in Victorian England.**

**A notable difference between the two versions is that, other than the Red Knight, the Red Army makes no appearance.**

**Now, Reader, you know of the Fourth Wall Problem. Fix the other classics...or the world will come to an end. All books will be destroyed.**

**Good luck.**

_**[/enter][/command][/memory]**_


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